Rosalie Gaull Silberman was the first wife of Laurence Hirsch Silberman an American lawyer, diplomat, jurist, and government official who served as a United States Circuit Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit from 1985 until his death on Oct. 2, 2022 at age 86.
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She met her husband-to-be, future federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman, in 1955 during summer school at Harvard University.
Laurence’s first wife Rosalie was an American conservative activist who, with Barbara Olson and others, co-founded the Independent Women’s Forum.
She was appointed by President Richard Nixon to the Presidential Commission for the Education of Disadvantaged Children, and she worked as a press secretary for U.S. Sen. Robert Packwood (R-Oregon).
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In 1984, she was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), where she served until 1995, rising to the positions of vice-chair and commissioner.
From 1995–2000, she was executive director of the Office of Congressional Compliance, an independent authority established by Congress to oversee the new law requiring that Congress abide by many of the same workplace regulations that covered the rest of the nation.
In 2002, Donald Rumsfeld appointed her to the Defense Department Advisory Commission on the Status of Women (DACOWITS), where she served as Boardmember, and, later, Chairperson Emeritus until her death five years later.
Rosalie died from complications from breast cancer on Sunday, February 18, 2007 at Georgetown University Hospital, Washington, D.C., at the age of 69.
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